Local officials in China have hidden dangers of coronavirus in Beijing, US agencies say



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Communist Party leaders oversee an authoritarian system that prevents local officials from freely sharing information with officials at the national level, they said, and it has had deadly consequences for the world. It is a version of the so-called Chernobyl effect, where local officials avoid informing central authorities of a catastrophic event until it is far too late, US officials have said.

Additionally, Beijing officials have attempted to spread misinformation about the origins of the virus. The CIA has said since at least February that Chinese central officials are not sharing everything they know about the virus – including a more accurate count of cases – or doing all they can to help the world with it. prepare for the pandemic.

Public reports have revealed wrongdoing by Chinese officials at all levels, but in different ways.

In early January, WHO officials began to conclude that officials in Beijing were hiding information, the Associated Press reported in June, citing internal documents and records. Central officials have delayed publication of the virus’s full genome and ordered labs to destroy virus samples. At the same time, they were trying to get more information from reluctant officials in Wuhan.

Throughout early January, officials from Wuhan and the provincial government attempted to suppress information about the outbreak, in part because they feared derailing the annual meeting of the local Communist Party held at the time. .

Around mid-January, officials in Beijing began to realize the potential devastation. On January 13, Thailand said it discovered a case of the novel coronavirus, alarming Chinese officials, who within the day began issuing internal warnings of impending disaster, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

A Taiwanese health official who visited a Wuhan hospital with other foreigners January 13-15 said a Beijing official told him about possible human-to-human transmission, though local authorities were playing down this possibility. Two days later, the Wuhan health commission announced that a family in the city was infected with the virus and that “limited human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out.”

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